The government of Thailand decided to impose restrictions on any currency sales of $20,000 or more, unless the purpose of the sale is for trade.
Setting trading limits killed their trust with the markets in one move. Now they have to go back and start building trust again, and it will never be the same. Contrast this to Lula in Brazil, who was just named the best president in history or some such silly thing. The didn’t trust him on day one, now the markets love him.
Hedging a house
Everyone is betting on home prices falling and so there is really no cheap way to hedge your house. The last time I looked the forward prices a year out were 30% or so lower than current. So what good is hedging a future price that is already down 30%. Might as well sell at today’s spot price, yes?
Maybe next housing boom, but not this one.
Pension obligations
It’s getting harder for GM to get pension obligations met. The current strategy by management seems to be to declare bankruptcy, revise the contracts and dump the pension on PBGC, the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. This may be the correct strategy to allow the company to compete and survive moving forward, but a lot of hardworking people, and to a lesser extent us taxpayers, and going to get hurt.
Dr. Douglas Rice 